[ExI] shops opening

[Dylan Distasio]

On Mon, Apr 20, 2020 at 12:45 PM John Clark via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On Mon, Apr 20, 2020 at 11:14 AM Dylan Distasio via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
> *> There's a new bug, *
>>
>
> Yes it's new, nobody has seen anything like it before so our knowledge of
> it is slight. You keep assuming that things are really better than they
> seem, well maybe so, but maybe things are worse than they seem.
>

It's not true that we haven't seen anything like it.   It appears to be
another coronavirus similar to SARS (and thankfully dissimilar to MERS).
I'm not assuming anything, I'm looking at a number of data points and
preprints and coming up with my best guess like everyone else.  I'm not
pulling my hypothesis out of thin air or how I want things to be.


>
>
>>
>> *> 1,580 people have died, and their economy for the most part is still
>> open. *
>>
>
> Yes 1,580 people have died in Sweden, and the population of Sweden is 32
> times smaller than the population of the USA. And Sweden's death numbers
> double every 8 days. How long will that rate of doubling continue? Nobody
> knows because as you say this is a new bug, and in Sweden's case there is
> the complication that some think extreme cold slows the spread of the virus
> and Sweden is currently very cold. Summer is coming.
>

Some people think summer will be good for it dying off.  Australia has very
few cases of it, yet tons of traffic with Asia and China.  I don't believe
that Australia has been any more effective at containing it than anywhere
else, yet their counts remain very low.


>
>
>> *> What is your end game here, John, if you were running the show?   *
>>
>
> I have no magical end game solution that does not involve a tragic amount
> of economic pain and human death, all we can do is try to minimize it the
> best we can.
>

Don't you think there needs to be a balance between economic pain and human
death?  How long are you willing to keep the economy shuttered,
particularly in states with very low current counts (likely due to
population density).


>
>
>> *> There is a real possibility that there will not be an effective
>> vaccine developed for t*his.
>>
>
> I'm not as pessimistic as you are. Given the fact that the virus doesn't
> mutate much and most people form antibodies and recover I think it's very
> unlikely that a vaccine can not be found, but if I'm wrong and a prevention
> or an effective treatment turns out to be as difficult as with cancer then
> we'd just have to accept a permanent and significant reduction of the human
> lifespan and of our standard of living. But right now we're a hell of a
> long way from that point of desperation.
>

I'm not pessimistic about a vaccine, John, but I'm not optimistic about one
either.  Coronavirus vaccines are not an easy task even if you assume that
there is a stable antigenic target.   Prior vaccine attempts have resulted
in very nasty inflammatory responses in a subset of those innoculated.  I
would guess that is going to be a challenge here, and you won't find me
personally going near a CV-19 vaccine for quite some time.  I certainly
won't be first in line to get one, I can tell you that.   Either way
though, I hope your optimism is warranted, and we get one, but I think
economic policy should assume we don't get one, not that we do.
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